“B-but, you- h-how did you-?”
The hooded man tilts his head slightly to the side, and says prosaically –
“You came to see me in Paradox. I’ve come to see you on Earth. What’s so strange about that?”
“W-well.. I didn’t know you could do.. that…”
An awkward silence spans between the two of them as the wind whistles by them quietly. Seymour continues to stare at his robed companion, his shock dissipated into confusion, and asks somewhat defensively –
“Um, so.. Why are you here?”
“Oh… I dunno. Feeling a little sentimental, I suppose. Just felt like being back on old ground.”
“Er, alright then..”
Seymour sits down unsteadily on the debris, and gazes back up at the stars, very aware that the hooded man is staring down at him with silent curiosity. He clears his throat pointedly, and says –
“I’d, uh.. kinda like to be alone right now, if you don’t mind.”
“Hm.”
The hooded man, instead of responding, takes a deep breath of the windy air, and utters with a sad smile, his eyes still shrouded in darkness –
“Yeah… Still tastes the same.”
Suddenly, the man starts down the hill of debris, and vanishes into the shadows of the empty night. Seymour blinks several times in confusion, trying to discern whether or not what he just saw was even real. Eventually, he slinks off the pile of rubble, his eyes burning from fatigue and mind still reeling, and slowly ventures back to where Trace and the others remain asleep in the road. He slides back down against the building where he sat before, wraps his arms around his knees, and closes his eyes, trying to block out the torrent of feelings swirling psychotically in his heart.
When the sun rises the next morning, it brings with it a torpid haze of wretched humidity that suffocates from all sides. The sun beats down maliciously on Seymour and the others as they continue to wander through the roads towards Santuc, though as the afternoon approaches, they can barely stand for the heat. Any breeze that wends its way through the burning land is like the breath of the devil, and provides no respite whatsoever. Trace, who is in far worse shape than the others, grasps Seymour’s coat sleeve, which he tied around his waist, and chokes out through his dry throat, his wrinkled face absolutely drenched in sweat –
“K-kid.. W-we’re gonna die out here…”
Seymour worriedly looks around at his companions, wiping the sweat from his brow: Sam leans weakly against the side of a scorched wall, her eyes closed tight, breathing in short, sharp intakes, while Elena and Data idle under the slight shade of a precariously-placed piece of debris overhanging a fallen archway, panting from exhaustion while they remove most of their clothes. Seymour, on the other hand, looks perfectly fine, other than the sweat on his face and clothes, which Trace notices with a weary scowl.
“How come you ain’t dying from the heat like us, kid..?”
Looking away from Trace’s drenched face self-consciously, Seymour mumbles evasively –
“Well.. I’m Magnispawn… Remember? So.. yeah… Better temperature regulation…”
Trace groans angrily, rolls onto his back, and whispers under his breath, his gnarled hands over his eyes –
“Man.. Some guys get all the luck…”
Seymour kneels down at Trace’s side uncomfortably, his stained shirt sticking to his skin, and takes a look as his hazy surroundings. They appear to have wandered into the scorched, melted remains of an old residential area, lying inert and barren beneath the intense glare of the sun. He takes another look around at his exhausted companions before Trace suddenly grips his pant leg, and breathes croakily –
“C’mon, kid… Can’t you go.. look for water or something…?”
“Are you kidding me, Trace? It’s probably all dried up from the heat.”
“Just take a damn look, kid! We.. aren’t gonna make it there otherwise…”
Sighing, knowing he has no right to argue, Seymour calls over to Sam and the others, telling them to stay put while he searches the area. They all nod blearily, too exhausted to respond verbally. With the sun’s rays raging down upon him through the languorous haze of humidity, Seymour searches the ruins of the area for any glimpse of water that might remain, his mind made sluggish by the heat, but the ground is as dry and cracked as a desert. He traverses all up and down the torpid streets, occasionally passing by a scorched corpse, some of which are clearly children who, Seymour guesses, must’ve lived in the area before the diffusion. Once again faced head-on with the consequences of his actions, Seymour wipes his forehead clean of sweat nervously, his heart beating painfully against his chest at the sight of each withered corpse. Coming upon a house that remains mostly intact, besides a rather large hole in the right side of the shingled roof, Seymour ducks inside, and breathes in the concrete dust swirling in the rays of the sun shining in through the opening in the ceiling. He sees no water anywhere, to his dismay, though he notices something metallic glinting in the sunlight a few feet away from him, and approaches it slowly to find a large, circular metal door cemented into the ground, partially hidden by a scorched carpet and debris. He pulls on the door’s handle forcefully, only to find it melted firmly into the concrete. Sighing impatiently, he seizes a thick chunk of concrete from the house’s rubble, jams it under the handle, and slams his hands down on it, effectively prying the handle loose from the ground. He opens the door slowly upward and is met with a blast of heat so intense, he can feel his skin literally burning as it rushes past before dissipating into the languid air. Placing his hand over the slight burn on his cheek, he carefully descends into the broiling chamber below, and finds it to be a small, makeshift bomb shelter, with its inhabitant’s charbroiled bodies, two of which are children, still all grouped around the door, killed in mid-escape. Taking care not to tread on the blackened corpses, getting dizzier by the second from the intense heat , Seymour runs his hands along the narrow shelves carved straight into the concrete wall, and finds two mid-sized military ammo boxes made of green-colored carbide jammed within. He pulls them loose, and open the lids to find, in each box, three large metal bottles, four packages of artificial juice mix, six partially melted tins of old military rations, and two frag grenades. Twisting open the lid of a bottle, Seymour tips it ever so slightly over his palm, and a few drops of murky water drip out. Stunned by his luck, Seymour laughs in relief, puts the lid back on the bottle, and tucks the boxes under his arm. Before exiting the sweltering shelter, Seymour looks down at the charred bodies littering the floor, focusing mostly on the corpses of the two children, and feels the guilty knot in his chest tighten once again. Shaking his head to clear his muddled mind, Seymour pulls himself out of the shelter with the two boxes still under his arm, and emerges into the heat of the late afternoon, though compared to the intense heat of the shelter, it is not nearly as bad as it was before. Heading back towards the setting sun, Seymour eventually reaches Trace and his companions just as the sun sinks below the horizon, who lie in the shade of a shell of a scorched van parked at the side of the road. They seem to have recuperated slightly as the heat began to break. Seymour calls out to his friends happily, and holds the ammo boxes high above his head. They all shamble over gratefully, and he hands each of them a bottle of water and a tin of rations. While Sam, Elena and Data desperately chug down their water and hungrily devour their rations, Seymour tastes his own water. It has a heavy metallic taste in it, and is hot to the touch, but he nonetheless drinks half of the bottle before turning to Trace, who has already gone through his bottle completely, and is halfway through his rations as he says to Seymour with his mouth full –
“We owe ya one, kid. We really do.”
“Mm.. Sure.”
Trace surveys Seymour’s downcast face as he cracks open the lid of his second bottle of water, and asks gruffly –
“What’s up your ass?”
“It’s just.. uh… nothing.”
“Don’t give me that, kid. You
’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen.”
Seymour sighs despondently, the rays of the setting sun reflecting in his eyes in a contemplative sort of way. He lies down on his back, the concrete beneath him still hot to the touch, and utters quietly to the cloudless, deep blue sky above –
“I just don’t like having to see… the victims of my actions. It’s easier to think of them as just numbers rather than.. people…”
Trace’s chewing slows to a stop as he stares at Seymour with his eyebrows raised. He puts his tin of rations to the side, and says with a grin –
“Well, don’t worry about it, kid. It’s already in the past. They can’t hurt you where they are now.”
“… You think so?”
After the sun is fully below the horizon, and the thick curtains of night once again fall over Seymour and the others, they wander up to the top of a still-standing multilevel parkade to rest for the night. Trace picks the most intact car still on top of the parkade, pulls a pin from one of the frag grenades Seymour found, and throws it inside, blasting it a few feet off of the ground before it crashes back down and is set aflame. He smiles at the others’ dumbstruck faces, and declares happily –
“What? Now we have a fire.”
While everyone gathers around the blaze and talk amongst themselves, Seymour goes down a level on the parkade and looks out into the moonless night. He can see a large, curved black mass far off in the distance, blotting out the stars.
“You’re almost there, Seymour.”
Swiveling around in surprise, Seymour finds that the hooded man has returned again, and watches the night sky with his unseen eyes.
“You.. What is it this time?”
“Well, that’s rude. Do I need a reason to visit a friend?”
Seymour scowls at the man darkly, and says quietly –
“I don’t believe we’re friends.”
“Heh, yes, I know you think that.”
“Well, either tell me why you’re here, or leave!”
“Seymour? What’s wrong?”
Elena’s voice echoes over the edge of the top floor, and Seymour looks up in surprise. She comes running down the stairwell and sees Seymour at the edge of the parkade, her face quizzical. She doesn’t seem to notice the hooded man at all, despite the fact that he is standing right next to Seymour.
“Who were you yelling at, Seymour?”
“Er, nobody..?”
Seymour struggles to keep himself from glancing at the hooded man, who merely smiles blandly at him, and shows no signs of leaving. Elena approaches Seymour anxiously, and stops just at the end of the parkade, her eyes fixed on the blanket of stars as she sits down slowly, her legs dangling out over the edge.
“… It’s kinda beautiful, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean.. I doubt the world has ever been this silent. And that’s kinda.. beautiful, I suppose, especially under these stars.”
Completely at a loss for words, Seymour sits down next to her, and so does the hooded man. Seymour watches him intently, trying not to react as he starts to run his long, pale fingers through Elena’s hair with a slight smile. His left hand is missing the ring finger; he had not noticed when he saw him in Paradox. Seymour tries to talk to Elena, but a voice speaks menacingly at the back of his mind.
Don’t say anything.
The man rests his head on Elena’s shoulder in inscrutable silence as she continues to stare out into the wasteland unknowingly, and suddenly, she takes Seymour’s hand in hers. Feeling his heart snap still, Seymour asks nervously –
“What’re you doing, Elena?”
“… I was just thinking… This is the third time now that you’ve shown me extraordinary beauty. In Konsai.. on the top of Santuc… and now, with the silence of complete and absolute emptiness. I can’t even tell you how much it means to me, Seymour.”
Seymour, his nerves jangled, wrenches his hand free of Elena’s, and shouts forcefully –
“What are you talking about?! I destroyed Konsai, Elena!”
“I know, but-”
“I made you my slave on top of Santuc!”
“Yes, I know that, but-”
“And I had to kill nine billion people to make this silence! You think that’s a good thing?!”
Taken aback by his incensed yelling and frustrated from being cut off, Elena shakes her head despondently, stands up, and makes for the stairwell, saying quietly to Seymour as she passes –
“No, I don’t.. But it’s still beautiful.”
Breathing heavily as he watches Elena’s silhouette disappear into the shadows of the balmy night, feeling the anger surge through his veins, Seymour looks back over the edge of the lot, expecting to see the hooded man, but he appears to have inexplicably disappeared again. He sits down back over the edge, trying to make sense of everything that has happened in the past few days, but it all feels like a jumbled mess of confusion and guilt to him. He lies down on his back, his legs still dangling over the edge, and closes his eyes solemnly, already feeling mad and embarrassed with himself for shouting at Elena.
You should’ve just kept holding it, Seymour. That’s what you want, isn’t it?
Seymour opens his eyes agitatedly, tired of the voices in his head, and breathes baldly –
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
On the third day of their trek towards Santuc, the heat thankfully does not return in its full intensity. Instead, the day is mired in a prosaic bed of fluffy, whitish-grey clouds that shine brightly like a massive florescent light. The distant mass that Seymour had spotted the night earlier turns out to be Santuc TerraDome on the horizon, and at first light, the group hurry off towards it, hoping to be at the transit tunnel by nightfall. By late afternoon, they enter the remains of Dystas TerraDome, passing silently through the empty, decimated streets while shadows of the evening creep lithely upon them, making each twisted structure look like the silhouette of a ghoul. Eventually, once the sky sinks into blackness and rife with glimmering stars once again, Seymour and the others reach the shell of Santuc TerraDome with immense relief. Following the perimeter of the impossibly enormous TerraDome, while winding their way through the scorched, decayed ruins of the bombed-out city, the group, exhausted and dehydrated, finally reaches the transit tunnel entrance after over three days of trudging, and, all together, enter its darkened depths. Seymour takes one last look out of the tunnel before the light of the stars gets swallowed by the suffocating darkness, and notices, with a pang of surprise, the hooded man standing still and silent in the middle of the tunnel entrance, his hands hidden behind his back. He slowly reaches up and flips his hood off, but his face is too dark to see as he raises his scarred, ghostly pale hand, and waves goodbye without a word.
~Santuc TerraDome: Dystas Transit Tunnel~
Inside the shadowy transit tunnel, Seymour and the others soon come across the collapsed Seeker barricade, which is coated in layers of dried blood and internal organs, while fat, filthy rats dash around at their feet, chewing the flesh off of scattered limbs lying amid piles of partially blown-apart corpses. Running his fingers along the bloodstained wall, Trace looks to Sam with a disbelieving smile.
“Jesus, Sam.. This your doing? What’d you do? Set off an atom bomb?
“Yeah.. This type of massacre doesn’t seem like something you’d do..”
Sam glances at the two of them self-consciously, and, while keeping her eyes averted resolutely, mutters –
“It wasn’t just me, you guys.. It was Leo too..”
“This seems a bit much for two people to be able to do..”
“.. Well, it was just us.”
“Okay, Sam.. There’s really no point in pretending Adrian wasn’t with you.”
Sam stops in her tracks, the others staring at her turned back curiously, when she abruptly swivels around, glaring at Seymour agitatedly, and shouts in a loud, carrying voice that echoes down the empty, feculent tunnel –
Taken aback by her sudden outburst, Seymour clears his throat, and says plainly, while the others watch him intently –
“Certain.. things have come to light. Suffice it to say, his assistance is needed.”
Sam folds her arms crossly, and mumbles defiantly –
“Hmph. You’re certainly quick to change your mind.”
“Well, I don’t relish the idea of utilizing him, but sometimes necessity must be put before pride.”
“You never did say what you need him for, Seymour.. Care to enlighten us?”
“Oh, right.. Well, I recalled that Adrian owes me a rather large favor, and now’s a better time than any to claim it.”
“Er, alright then..”
The group continues through the tunnel, past the collapsed barricade, onwards from the many side-chambers lining the blood-soaked walls, and eventually, they leave the carnage behind. Nearing the end of the lengthy tunnel, Seymour and the others come across a group of Seekers sitting forlornly against the tunnel wall; still alive, though badly injured, they all turn their heads angrily at the party’s approach. The tallest and least injured of the group stands with an incensed glare, and grabs Seymour’s shoulder as he passes by.
“Who the fuck are you guys? Where’d you come from?”
“Nobody worth your time. Just let us pass.”
“Wait.. That girl..”
Looking past Seymour, the Seeker points at Sam with a livid, wide-eyed stare, and the Seekers at his feet rise in rage-filled remembrance.
“She’s one of the bastards who did this to us..”
Paradox: The Last Day - Seymour's Story Page 28
